The pub­lish­ing world is chang­ing. Cer­tainly, that is no sur­prise to any­one. How? Now that’s the mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion. If only we knew in advance what the future will bring.

Let’s break it out:

Up until the 1990’s, the inter­net was for all intents and pur­poses, non-existent in the aver­age home. It wasn’t until 1995–96 that things really started tak­ing off. In that short amount of time, the infor­ma­tion high­way has lit­er­ally trans­formed the world. If we step back and look at the sit­u­a­tion in a his­tor­i­cal con­text, the results are truly stag­ger­ing. Change this fast and this mas­sive is prac­ti­cally unheard of in his­tory, except dur­ing a rev­o­lu­tion. Appar­ently, that is where we are right now.

Gone are the days when read­ers flocked to their local book­stores in search of infor­ma­tion. Now they just click. Think about it. What do you do when you need to build some­thing? When you want to know how to make some­thing, need maps for a trip, ques­tions on gar­den­ing, research … every­thing? Where once peo­ple sought infor­ma­tion in libraries and stores, now we turn on our com­put­ers. Want a recipe for crème brûlée? Look it up. You’re lit­er­ally clicks away. And you can see how peo­ple rated the recipe and read com­ments for sug­gested changes. Seri­ously, what we have gained from instan­ta­neous infor­ma­tion is absolutely astound­ing. No one dri­ves thirty min­utes in traf­fic to buy a book on hum­ming birds any­more. That would be crazy. We click. We type. We scroll.

Non-fiction went so rapidly from being pur­chased to being clicked that book­stores were left scratch­ing their heads. Hop­ing to keep up with the times, they added cof­fee, sweet snacks, lounge chairs, play­grounds, music, any­thing to draw peo­ple from their homes. Neigh­bor­hood book­stores dis­ap­peared so fast you would think they had gone up in flames, eaten alive by the big chains that were ready and wait­ing to pounce at the first sign of weakness.

Now we are in the midst of that same kind of change in fic­tion. The kin­dle, nook, Ama­zon, and any other online book dealer or ereader has made it pos­si­ble for authors to sell their work directly to read­ers. For the first time ever, writ­ers are talk­ing directly to their audi­ences rather than rely­ing on a mid­dle man. The only prob­lem is, the mid­dle man just so hap­pens to be the the pub­lisher. You see, the rea­son the future of fic­tion so impor­tant is because it is all they have left. Non­fic­tion has already blown out of con­trol, and now self-publishing threat­ens to do the same to fic­tion. It is true, there are only six big pub­lish­ers, but they are big because they inhaled every­one else who couldn’t stay afloat in these tur­bu­lent times. Between the reces­sion and the eread­ers, it’s no won­der so many arti­cles are com­ing to their defense. It is highly pos­si­ble that in a few years, they will start to crum­ble. See­ing the writ­ing on the wall, these big guys are reach­ing out to all of their big friends: Write an arti­cle in the Times. Save us! Get out the big guns and squish the lit­tle guy before he takes us out of busi­ness the way we took every­one else down.

Don’t get me wrong. I actu­ally love the big pub­lish­ers. I love their books, their mar­ket­ing skills, and their mass dis­tri­b­u­tion. I would pre­fer that they all stay in busi­ness. But after find­ing out how many amaz­ing authors and amaz­ing books have been turned away by the big guys, and how many authors are now build­ing their plat­forms on their own, deliv­er­ing their amaz­ing prod­ucts directly to read­ers … I’m less inclined to feel as bad about it.

What it comes down to is this: the inter­net changed the rules. It’s not the first time some­thing like this has hap­pened, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Unfor­tu­nately, in a world where no one truly under­stands what is hap­pen­ing, stay­ing afloat is eas­ier said than done. And as is always the case in a rev­o­lu­tion, those who sur­vive must learn to adapt.